NV on Spring Ex

Dec 12, 2008

You own the night. Green grain of prairie
light through thermal scope. Cross-haired,
from the LAV’s hot eyeball sockets, stare;
you, your gunner in his turret, joystick right
to left, right to left, right to left, site cleft,
seams, breasts of earth’s unsleeping body.
Your NVGs, your thermals, alert to heat
of thing and flesh, to this war, soft on Ex
razor-rock sharp on desert, four months out;
this war that slithers, creeps, its skin glassy
bright as ice in drinks, the Xmas baubles,
the wood and brass of the officers’ mess
after the Men’s Dinner, the troops dismissed,
back at garrison, a billion light years passed.